On November 25, Russian border patrol ships attacked and seized three Ukrainian naval vessels attempting to transit from the Black Sea to the Sea of Azov via the Kerch Strait. That violated both maritime law and a 2003 Ukraine-Russia agreement that governs passage through the strait.

The attack foreshadows a Russian bid to establish unilateral control over the Kerch Strait and perhaps blockade Ukrainian ports on the Sea of Azov. Unfortunately, the United States and Europe have reacted weakly, largely limiting their responses to expressions of concern. The West should make clear that Russia will face concrete consequences if it does not release the Ukrainian naval vessels and crews and allow Ukraine free passage through the strait.

What happened?

On the morning of November 25, three Ukrainian naval vessels—a tug and two small gunboats—approached the southern entrance to the Kerch Strait. After transiting the Black Sea from Odesa, they sought to pass through the strait to a Ukrainian port on the Sea of Azov, following a course taken by two other Ukrainian gunboats in September. Although they were military vessels, the Ukrainian ships had a right of innocent passage. Moreover, a 2003 agreement between Ukraine and Russia states that Ukrainian- and Russian-flagged ships, both merchant ships and state non-commercial vessels, have a right to free navigation in the Strait of Kerch and Sea of Azov, which the sides consider the internal waters of Ukraine and Russia.

While Ukrainian and Russian accounts differ as to some details of what happened, their stories coincide on key points. Russian border patrol vessels intercepted the three Ukrainian ships in the southern approach to the strait, and the Russian vessel Don rammed the Ukrainian tug Yani Kapu. Video and audio from the Don make clear the Don’s intention to ram.

The Ukrainians say the Russian vessels sought to ram the Berdyansk and Nikipol gunboats as well, but the smaller, more agile Ukrainian ships successfully maneuvered out of the way (Russian aerial photos show the sides’ ships circling and maneuvering). In the process, it appears that the Russian vessel Izumrud rammed, or was rammed by, another Russian ship, possibly the Don.

The three Ukrainian ships then maintained station for much of the day in Russian-controlled waters at the south entrance to the Kerch Strait. In the meantime, the Russians physically blocked the main passage through the strait, positioning a tanker under the central span of the Kerch bridge.

That evening, apparently having concluded that they would not be allowed passage into the Sea of Azov, the Ukrainian vessels turned south toward the Black Sea, exiting the approach to the strait. Russian border patrol vessels intercepted the Ukrainian ships, ordered them to halt and then opened fire, wounding several Ukrainian crewmen. The Russians boarded and seized the Ukrainian vessels. Crucially, as Bellingcat has showed, Ukrainian and Russian data agree that the attack took place in the Black Sea more than 12 nautical miles off the coast of Russian-occupied Crimea—that is, in international waters. The Russian action is indefensible, particularly as the Ukrainian ships clearly were heading away from the Kerch Strait when attacked.

What’s at issue?

Since seizing Crimea in 2014, the Russians have moved to tighten control over the Sea of Azov. The bridge they built to link the city of Kerch in Crimea to the Taman peninsula on the Russian mainland prevents the passage of larger ships that used to call at the Ukrainian port of Mariupol on the Sea of Azov. Mariupol is Ukraine’s third busiest port, exporting steel, iron and grain. Over the past nine months, the Ukrainians have complained that Russian patrol boats have stopped, boarded and/or harassed commercial vessels bound for Ukrainian ports on the Sea of Azov as well as Ukrainian fishing boats.

Russia seems to be trying to establish unilateral control over passage through the Kerch Strait and the Sea of Azov.

Russia seems to be trying to establish unilateral control over passage through the Kerch Strait and the Sea of Azov. The Ukrainians fear that Russia will impose an economic blockade on Ukrainian ports in a bid to up the economic pressure on Kyiv. During the week of November 26, the Ukrainians reported that ships bound for Ukrainian ports on the Sea of Azov were not being permitted passage through the Kerch Strait.

The West is concerned

Late on November 25, the European Union and NATO called on Russia to ensure unhindered passage for Ukrainian ships into the Sea of Azov. Officials of various Western countries began speaking up the next day, indicating various degrees of concern. With thanks to @sovietsergey, we learned that:

Some went further. The Lithuanian foreign ministry, Canadian foreign minister, and EU president “condemned” the Russian action, while the British foreign secretary “utterly condemned” it.

Washington had nothing to say on the 25th. The next day, Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made strong statements, but President Donald Trump almost immediately undercut them when he seemed to take a neutral position. National Security Advisor John Bolton did not help on November 27 when spelling out topics for the planned Trump meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the margins of the G-20 summit; he had to be prompted to put Ukraine on the list.

In an interview that same day, Trump suggested he might cancel the meeting with Putin. On November 28, however, U.S. and Russian officials indicated that the meeting was on, which the president reaffirmed the morning of November 29 before heading to Andrews Air Force Base. Then, from Air Force One en route to Argentina, he tweeted that the meeting was off, citing Russia’s seizure of the Ukrainian ships and sailors (most thought the more likely reason was that morning’s news of the guilty plea by his former lawyer and reports about his company’s efforts to build a Trump Tower in Moscow).

Nothing suggests that these expressions of concern and condemnation, or Trump’s on again/off again handling of his meeting with Putin, caused anxiety in the Kremlin. Putin in Argentina brushed off the complaints of his Western counterparts. One week after the attack, the Yani Kapu, Berdyansk, and Nikipol remain impounded at a Russian facility in Kerch, the ships’ crews sit in Lefortovo Prison in Moscow, and Russia continues to harass ships traveling to Ukrainian ports in the Sea of Azov.

The West should get serious

Russia’s November 25 attack on the Ukrainian ships was a test of Kyiv’s reaction. It was also a test of how the West would respond. Unfortunately, the West is failing miserably. If the United States and Europe do not wish to see Russia solidify its control over the Sea of Azov and blockade Ukraine’s ports, they have to make clear to Moscow that there will be consequences.

The West could consider military steps such as increasing the tempo of visits by NATO warships to the Black Sea (that tempo has already increased since Russia’s seizure of Crimea). The presence of NATO warships, particularly U.S. Navy vessels capable of carrying sea-launched cruise missiles, clearly irks the Kremlin.

Some have suggested that NATO send warships into the Sea of Azov. That would not prove wise. First, it could well provoke a shooting conflict in a region where Russia has geographic advantages. Second, it would violate the 2003 agreement, which requires the approval of both Ukraine and Russia for third-country naval vessels to enter the Sea of Azov. The West should not take actions that would delegitimize that agreement, as it is critical to Ukraine’s claim for open access through the Kerch Strait.

The United States and other NATO countries, on a national basis, might weigh what additional military assistance would be appropriate for Ukraine in view of Russia’s latest military escalation.

The United States and European Union should consider additional economic sanctions on Russia. They could draw on the following list of examples:

Making Moscow understand that unacceptable actions will have growing costs is key to changing calculations in the Kremlin.

Prohibit U.S. and EU member state-flagged ships from calling on Russian ports on the Sea of Azov and Black Sea.

Prohibit ships with cargos from Russian ports in the Sea of Azov and Black Sea from entering American and European ports. (Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, a close political ally of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and candidate to succeed her as head of Germany’s Christian Democratic Union, has already suggested closing European ports to ships from Russian ports on the Sea of Azov.)

Target Russian state-owned banks or parastatal companies for specific sanctions. (In April, when the U.S. government announced sanctions on United Company Rusal, a large Russian-based aluminum producer, the company’s stock plunged by 50 percent, while the Moscow stock exchange’s index lost 8 percent. The Treasury Department subsequently eased the sanctions, but the case demonstrates that the West can inflict significant economic impacts on Russian entities.)

Suspend work on the Nord Stream II pipeline. The pipeline project is dubious as a commercial project. Refurbishing the existing pipeline network that transits gas through Ukraine would be less expensive, but Moscow wishes to end the transit fees it pays Kyiv and have the ability to totally shut off gas into that pipeline network.

The Kremlin tries to put on a brave face about sanctions, but they do cause economic pain, particularly for a stagnant Russian economy that is growing at less than 2 percent per year. Making Moscow understand that unacceptable actions will have growing costs is key to changing calculations in the Kremlin.

This situation cries out for leadership from Washington, and it would behoove the Trump administration to act. First, it could coordinate with European allies on sanctions that would have broad impact and signal trans-Atlantic unity in the face of Russia’s unacceptable actions. Second, administration action would forestall new congressional sanctions, which likely would be less finely targeted and more difficult to remove if/when Russia corrected its misbehavior.

If the West takes no action, it should get used to Moscow treating the Sea of Azov as a virtual Russian lake. And it should think what next steps an emboldened Moscow will attempt in its conflict with Ukraine and hybrid campaign against the West.

The aggression that Russia unleashed against Ukraine in 2014 is now well into its fifth year. Unfortunately, Moscow has shown no readiness to end the conflict it keeps simmering in the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine, let alone address the status of Crimea. Hopes of a year ago that a U.N. peacekeeping force might offer a path out of the Donbas morass have dimmed. It appears the Kremlin will wait another year, until after the presidential and parliamentary elections in Ukraine, to reconsider its policy.

In the meantime, attitudes among Ukrainians toward Russia continue to harden. The country is deepening its links to Europe while severing ties to its eastern neighbor. The longer that Moscow holds off on changing its policy, the more the already wide gulf between Ukraine and Russia will grow.

Continuing Conflict

Soldiers in Russian-style combat fatigues (but without identifying insignia) seized Crimea in late February 2014. Ukrainians called them “little green men.” Russian President Vladimir Putin denied they were the Russian military. Weeks later, he admitted that they were and awarded their commanders commendations for the seizure.

Little green men appeared again in Donbas, triggering a conflict that has now claimed well more than 10,000 lives. While Moscow has tried to minimize its visible footprint in the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk “People’s Republics,” those entities survive only due to Russian assistance, which comes in the form of funding, leadership, heavy weapons, ammunition and, at times, regular units of the Russian army.

The Minsk II agreement, brokered in 2015 by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and then-French President François Hollande, aimed to end the fighting and provide a path, if less than well-defined, to a settlement of the Donbas conflict. More than three years later, its first two provisions—ceasefire and withdrawal of heavy arms away from the line of contact—have yet to be implemented. Most attribute blame for this failure to Russia and Russian proxy forces.

September 2018 generated hope that a way to resolve the conflict could be found. Mr. Putin suggested that Russia might agree to a U.N. peacekeeping force, though Russian officials envisaged it operating only along the line of conflict and limited to providing protection for Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) monitors.

That kind of mandate seemed overly narrow, and OSCE officials privately indicated that armed escorts would put their monitors at greater risk. Ukrainian officials, including Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, nevertheless indicated a readiness to consider a U.N. peacekeeping force—provided that its mandate was properly structured and that it could relatively quickly expand its area of operations to cover all of occupied Donbas, including the Ukraine-Russia border.

Serious countries have offered to provide troops. Those include Finland, Sweden, and Austria. A peacekeeping force, perhaps complemented by an interim international administration, offers a means to ensure a peaceful and orderly transition of Donbas back to Ukrainian sovereignty. It also offers the Kremlin a face-saving way to extract itself from a conflict that has no goal or end in sight.

Elections

Some analysts, including Russians, speculated that Mr. Putin might look for a way out after he won reelection in March. That election, however, is long past, and five months have gone by since the Russian president’s inauguration. It may be that the Kremlin has decided to wait until after next year’s elections in Ukraine to use the peacekeeping plan, or some other notion, to produce a settlement in Donbas.

Ukraine’s 2019 calendar has a presidential ballot on March 31 and Rada (parliamentary) elections no later than October. No clear favorite has emerged in either. The Kremlin undoubtedly will seek to influence both elections with money, supportive electronic media, active social media, and cyber operations. The few openly pro-Russian faces that remain in Ukraine, such as Victor Medvedchuk, also will likely help out.

Moscow’s influence campaign faces challenges, however. Ukrainians are on the alert for Russian interference. Moreover, no candidate or party wants a “pro-Moscow” label. And Russia’s occupation of Crimea and part of the Donbas means that a significant portion of the electorate that in the past has been pro-Russian will not be voting.

Russian interference thus may make the Ukrainian elections more chaotic. It will not, however, deliver a pro-Russian president or sizable pro-Russian bloc in the Rada.

In the Meantime

While the Kremlin continues the simmering conflict in Donbas and waits for change in Kyiv, Ukraine is steadily moving away from Russia.

Ukraine is steadily moving away from Russia.

Opinion polls reflect this. A June survey by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology showed 47 percent of Ukrainians favoring integration with the European Union, as opposed to 12 percent who supported joining the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union. In a country where the Russian language was once used as commonly as Ukrainian, many today have made the political choice to use Ukrainian.

Big changes are afoot in Ukraine’s religious scene. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Moscow Patriarchate, once the largest in numbers of adherents and parishes, has in recent years lost followers to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Kyiv Patriarchate. Sometime this fall, the Ukrainian church is expected to gain independent recognition from Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople. That will sever links between the Ukrainian church and Russia. The Russian Orthodox Church bitterly opposes this but appears to have little leverage to stop it.

Ukraine is moving west in economic terms as well. The European Union has displaced Russia to become Kyiv’s largest trading partner. Ukraine-EU trade made up more than 40 percent of Ukraine’s total in 2017. The decline in energy trade has accounted for a big part of the overall drop in Ukraine-Russia trade. Ukraine today imports no natural gas directly from Russia, a striking fact given that in the 1990s some 75 percent of Ukraine’s natural gas came from Russia or from Central Asia via Russia. Any Russian-origin gas that Ukraine now uses comes from Central Europe.

Ukraine is becoming more connected in other ways with the West and less so with Russia. In September, low-cost carrier Ryanair announced connecting flights between Kyiv and 12 European cities. In contrast, there have been no regular direct passenger flights between Ukraine and Russia since late 2015 (a boon for the Minsk airport). Ukraine’s transportation minister, citing Russia’s continuing aggression, this summer suggested ending rail and bus links between the two countries as well.

Russian Interests

The Kremlin could choose to adopt a course aimed at settling the conflict in Donbas. However, it seems unready to do so. As it continues its present approach, the gulf between Ukraine and Russia continues to widen. While the two will remain neighbors in a geographic sense (you cannot move one or the other), Moscow’s policy makes restoration of good, stable, neighborly relations a more difficult and difficult task.

One has to question whether a policy that drives Ukraine away and presses it closer to the West really is in Russia’s interest. The answer lies in the Kremlin—with Mr. Putin.

When Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin meet in Helsinki on July 16, the Crimean peninsula will loom large over their summit talks. How Trump handles the issue will have implications for European security and American credibility.

Putin’s spokesperson says Crimea—which the Russian military seized from Ukraine in 2014—is a settled matter and not a topic for summit discussion. That is not quite true. The Kremlin would love nothing more than to have the U.S. president accept and recognize its illegal annexation of Crimea. That would score a big win for Putin.

Trump unfortunately has given Moscow reason for hope. While virtually all other U.S. officials maintain that the United States continues to regard Crimea as part of Ukraine, Trump says: “We’re going to have to see.” At the June G-7 summit, he reportedly suggested Crimea should belong to Russia because most people there speak Russian.

Spinning a Putin narrative

In Helsinki, there is a good chance that Putin, probably in the one-on-one meeting, will spin a case for Trump accepting Crimea’s annexation, something along the lines of: The Russian Empire colonized Crimea; its largest city, Sevastopol, was founded to be the homeport for the Russian Black Sea Fleet; Crimea was part of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic in Soviet times until 1954; and ethnic Russians constitute and for many decades have constituted the largest group there.

Putin can make a historical case for Crimea to be Russian. The case will sound reasonable to uninformed ears. It will be flawed.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the newly independent states, including Russia, recognized one another in their then-existing borders. That made sense. Attempting to redraw borders would have opened an insoluble can of worms.

Following the Soviet Union’s demise, the Russian government accepted that Crimea was part of Ukraine and professed support for Ukraine’s territorial integrity in both bilateral and multilateral agreements. One such agreement was the 1994 Budapest Memorandum of Security Assurances, in which Russia, the United States, and Britain pledged among other things to respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity. Even Putin acknowledged at one time that Crimea belonged to Ukraine.

In his narrative for Trump, Putin will undoubtedly omit those points. He instead may cite the principle of self-determination, arguing that the people of Crimea voted to join Russia in a March 16, 2014 referendum. While a significant portion of the population might have voted that way in a free ballot, the Russian president will skip over the fact that the referendum was a sham offering just two choices: join Russia or virtual independence. If someone wanted Crimea to remain a part of Ukraine, he or she found no box to check.

Putin’s embrace of self-determination, moreover, is selective. Just look at the bloody war waged under his leadership in 2000-03 to suppress Chechnya’s bid for independence.

Putin may raise the case of Kosovo as justification, arguing that the West recognized Kosovo’s independence over Serbia’s objections. The parallel does not work. Kosovo sought independence after Serbian security forces drove out hundreds of thousands of Kosovar Albanians in 1999. It then negotiated with Serbian officials for years to find a mutually agreeable separation before acting unilaterally. In Crimea, on the other hand, there was no ethnic cleansing; local authorities conducted no negotiations with Kyiv; and the peninsula went from Ukrainian to annexed by Russia in four weeks.

The cost of not understanding details

If Trump does not understand such details, he could stumble into Putin’s trap. Doing so would significantly damage U.S. interests.

First, acceptance of Crimea as Russian would destroy a trans-Atlantic policy—largely forged under U.S. leadership—of non-recognition of the most blatant military land-grab in Europe since World War II. That would further widen the emerging rift between Washington and Europe.

Second, recognition would embolden the Kremlin to test Trump to see what other transgressions he might let pass. That would make Europe more dangerous. Finding an end to the Russian-provoked conflict in eastern Ukraine would become more difficult. Moscow could be tempted to annex Georgia’s South Ossetia or Moldova’s Transnistria.

Third, recognition would break with a long-standing U.S. policy of supporting Ukraine’s territorial integrity as well as violate commitments Washington made in the Budapest Memorandum, promises that were key to persuading Kyiv to get rid of 1,900 strategic nuclear weapons designed and built to strike the United States. It would deal a sharp blow to the credibility of U.S. commitments.

Of particular relevance now, Trump has talked about a U.S. security guarantee as part of a deal on North Korean denuclearization. It appears that North Korea may not be that interested in giving up its nuclear weapons, but how much faith could Kim Jong-un have in a U.S. security guarantee or assurance if Trump blithely walks away from an assurance made to Ukraine less than 25 years ago?

The U.S. knows how to do non-recognition

It is difficult to see how Ukraine musters the political, diplomatic, and military leverage in the near term to restore sovereignty over Crimea. That is an analytical judgment. But it was difficult in 1945 to see how the Baltic states could regain independence from the Soviet Union. The United States nevertheless patiently maintained a policy of not recognizing their incorporation into the Soviet Union for five decades…until 1991, when the Baltic states regained their independence.

Support for Ukraine and for Crimea as a part of Ukraine should similarly be a matter of principle, specifically, the principle that countries should not use force to change borders. Principle matters.

Crimea poses a minefield for Trump in Helsinki—especially as Putin, drawing on his skills as a former KGB officer, will try to play him. Trump needs to get smart on the specifics. If he does not, his go-with-his-gut approach to foreign policy risks walking into a trap and laying another egg.

At long last, Donald Trump will have his fervently desired summit with Vladimir Putin. Having hit a post-Cold War low, the U.S.-Russia relationship could use a push toward a better state. A summit could do that, but only if Trump is disciplined in how he prepares for and deals with Putin.

Unfortunately, that appears to be a very big “if.” The president has given little reason to expect he has such discipline. A mere photo-op summit works to Putin’s advantage. And he will prepare and lay traps into which Trump could all too easily stumble.

Meeting in Helsinki

Washington and Moscow announced last Thursday that Presidents Trump and Putin will meet in Helsinki on July 16. That followed a June 27 meeting between National Security Advisor John Bolton and Putin at the Kremlin, after which Bolton said, “the fact of the summit itself is a deliverable.” That sets an awfully low bar. Bolton never would have said such a thing a few months ago.

If the White House wants a summit that advances U.S. interests, the president will have to prepare. That means gaining command of key U.S.-Russian issues, such as arms control, Ukraine, and Syria. He has smart people who can help him do that.

Preparation also means a positive NATO summit on July 11 and 12 that sends a message of robust allied unity, especially in responding to the challenges posed by Russia. That would strengthen Trump’s hand as he sits down with Putin.

Finally, a successful summit in Helsinki requires that Trump confront Putin candidly on issues where Russia is misbehaving. That is important if he wants to earn Putin’s respect. It is also important for how the summit will be seen back home.

A worthwhile agenda…

What should the summit agenda look like? There will be some general discussion, but it will be important that the leaders tackle specific issues. The two presidents should first agree on steps to ensure that the U.S.-Russia relationship does not deteriorate any further.

Mutual charges of violations have placed the INF Treaty in jeopardy, and New START expires in less than three years. Trump should press Putin to agree to task experts to resolve INF compliance issues. He could tell Putin that U.S. officials will give serious attention to Russian questions about the U.S. Aegis Ashore missile defense site in Romania, which Moscow claims violates the INF Treaty, if Russian officials address U.S. concerns about their 9M729 ground-launched cruise missile, which Washington maintains is a banned intermediate-range missile.

As for New START, Putin has hinted that Russia would like to extend New START (by its terms, it can be extended for up to five years, until 2026). Trump should agree to such an extension, which would preserve the predictability and stability benefits that New START provides to both countries.

A second area to seek progress is on military-to-military interactions. U.S. and Russian military forces now operate more frequently in close proximity, raising the possibility of an accident or miscalculation. Trump and Putin should have their senior military leaders sit down to agree on ways to reduce the prospect of a mistake that neither side should want. Senior military leaders might also usefully discuss doctrinal questions, in order to better understand the other side’s doctrine and explain elements that cause concern.

Trump also has to raise difficult issues. Ukraine tops that list. He should make clear that the United States will continue to support Kyiv, that Russia needs to make peace in eastern Ukraine, and that Western sanctions will remain in place until it does. Trump should press Putin to get serious about ending the Donbas conflict as well as put to rest hopes in the Kremlin that he might fold on this issue.

Trump also must raise Russia’s interference in U.S. politics. He should put Putin on notice that a continuation of this behavior will result in retaliation by Washington. Unless the Kremlin understands that its cyber and social media misconduct has costs, it will not cease.

A summit that ensures that the nuclear arms competition remains bounded and puts down clear markers on how Washington would respond to continued Russian misbehavior could set the stage for a process, likely a slow one, that would move the U.S.-Russia relationship toward a better place. That would be a useful summit.

… But reason for apprehension

There nevertheless remain good reasons for apprehension about the Helsinki summit.

First, is there any reason to expect Trump will prepare? Or will he just wing it?

Putin will come to the summit very well prepared to push his agenda with a gullible American counterpart. He could, for example, recite a biased Russian narrative regarding Crimea—colonized by Russians, unfairly transferred to Ukraine in 1954, populated by a Russian ethnic majority—that dupes Trump into reversing four years of the West’s policy of not recognizing Moscow’s illegal annexation of Crimea.

Second, will the NATO summit provide the right scene-setter for Helsinki? A repeat of the June G-7 summit fiasco would weaken Trump’s position and tempt Putin to strive to widen the emerging differences between the United States and its European allies.

Third, by a number of accounts, in contrast to his tweets, Trump shies away from confrontation in face-to-face meetings. If he ducks or soft-pedals difficult issues such as Ukraine or election interference, Putin will take Trump for a sucker and play him accordingly.

One can and should hope for a successful summit in Helsinki, one that begins the process of improving the U.S.-Russia relationship. Such a summit is possible. But based on what we have seen of Trump’s foreign policy performance, one should have modest expectations … and a certain amount of apprehension.

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https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-future-of-political-warfare-russia-the-west-and-the-coming-age-of-global-digital-competition/The future of political warfare: Russia, the West, and the coming age of global digital competitionhttp://webfeeds.brookings.edu/~/529869300/0/brookingsrss/topics/ukraine~The-future-of-political-warfare-Russia-the-West-and-the-coming-age-of-global-digital-competition/
Fri, 02 Mar 2018 14:33:17 +0000https://www.brookings.edu/?post_type=research&p=494623

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By Alina Polyakova, Spencer Phipps Boyer

Executive Summary

The Kremlin’s political warfare against democratic countries has evolved from overt to covert influence activities. But while Russia has pioneered the toolkit of asymmetric measures for the 21st century, including cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns, these tools are already yesterday’s game. Technological advances in artificial intelligence (AI), automation, and machine learning, combined with the growing availability of big data, have set the stage for a new era of sophisticated, inexpensive, and highly impactful political warfare. In the very near term, it will become more difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish between real and falsified audio, video, or online personalities. Malicious actors will use these technologies to target Western societies more rapidly and efficiently. As authoritarian states such as Russia and China invest resources in new technologies, the global competition for the next great leap in political warfare will intensify. As the battle for the future shifts to the digital domain, policymakers will face increasingly complex threats against democracies. The window to mount an effective “whole-of- society” response to emerging asymmetric threats is quickly narrowing.

This paper outlines the current state of play in political warfare, identifies emerging threats, and proposes potential policy responses. It argues for greater information sharing mechanisms between trans-Atlantic governments and the private sector, greater information security and transparency, and greater investments in research and development on AI and computational propaganda. As authoritarian regimes seek to undermine democratic institutions, Western societies must harness their current— though fleeting—competitive advantage in technology to prepare for the next great leap forward in political warfare. Western governments should also develop a deterrence strategy against political warfare with clearly defined consequences for specific offensive actions, while ensuring they retain their democracies’ core values of openness and freedom of expression.

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https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/putinrobot_001.jpg?w=272https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2018/02/22/ukraine-four-years-after-the-maidan/Ukraine four years after the Maidanhttp://webfeeds.brookings.edu/~/527931172/0/brookingsrss/topics/ukraine~Ukraine-four-years-after-the-Maidan/
Thu, 22 Feb 2018 16:38:12 +0000https://www.brookings.edu/?p=492529

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By Steven Pifer

In late February 2014, following three months of demonstrations on Kyiv’s Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square), then-President Victor Yanukovych fled the Ukrainian capital on a tortuous path that ultimately took him to Russia. On February 22, 2014, Ukraine’s parliament appointed an acting president and acting prime minister, who promptly announced their intention to press reforms and bring Ukraine closer to Europe.

Four years later, Ukraine finds itself in a low-intensity but still very real war with Russia. Russia seized Crimea and has prosecuted a conflict in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donbas that has claimed more than 10,000 lives. While President Petro Poroshenko and his governments have implemented serious reforms, the pace has slowed markedly. Many are particularly frustrated that more has not been done on the anti-corruption front.

Ukraine today finds itself facing two challenges: beating back Russian aggression, and completing the domestic reforms that will make Ukraine compatible with European Union norms and draw foreign investment to grow the economy. In order to succeed, Kyiv cannot afford to focus just on the Russian threat; it has to solve both challenges.

Dealing with the Russian Threat

As Mr. Yanukovych fled Kyiv, “little green men”—Russian troops in uniforms without identifying insignia—moved to occupy Crimea. Days later, Russia illegally annexed the peninsula. Shortly thereafter, Russian intelligence and military services provided leadership, funding, ammunition, heavy weapons and, in some cases, regular units of the Russian army to launch and sustain a separatist conflict in Donbas.

More than 10,000 have died in eastern Ukraine—including nearly 300 passengers on Malaysia Airlines flight 17, shot down over occupied Donbas by a Russian-provided surface-to-air missile. Much housing, industry, and infrastructure lie in shambles. An estimated 1.7 million internally displaced persons have left to reside elsewhere in Ukraine, and as many as 700,000 have gone to Russia.

While a substantially improved Ukrainian military has managed to stabilize the line of contact that separates it from Russian and Russian proxy forces, fighting continues despite settlement agreements reached in Minsk in September 2014 and February 2015 (the second one brokered by the leaders of Germany and France).

The Kremlin, however, appears content to sustain a simmering conflict in Donbas. That provides a means to pressure and undermine the government in Kyiv, impeding its efforts to bring the country closer to the European Union. Moscow’s denials of involvement have little credibility, given the identification of Russian military hardware and senior Russian officers on the ground in Donbas.

The “Normandy Four” channel established in June 2014 among the Ukrainian, Russian, German, and French leaders remains the principal venue for settling the conflict, though the U.S. government has taken a more active role the past nine months. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who describes Russia’s aggression against Ukraine as the biggest obstacle to improving the bilateral U.S.-Russia relationship, appointed Ambassador Kurt Volker as special envoy to help find an end to the conflict in support of the Minsk agreements.

The potentially promising development of the past six months is the possibility that the Kremlin might consider an international peacekeeping force to facilitate a settlement. Such a force would require adequate manning and a robust mandate. It could help provide the conditions for implementing political measures agreed in Minsk. While the peacekeeping force might begin along the line of contact, it would have to deploy rapidly throughout all of occupied Donbas, including on the Ukraine-Russia border. A force that got stuck on the line of contact would merely turn a simmering conflict into a frozen one.

Whether the Kremlin and President Vladimir Putin would agree to such a peacekeeping force remains an open question. With attention in Moscow now on the March 18 presidential election, the Russian view will not become clear until later in the spring.

Slowing Reform

In May 2014, Mr. Poroshenko was elected president, securing more than 55 percent of the vote. That obviated the need for a run-off, the first time since 1991 when a Ukrainian presidential election did not require a second ballot.

Mr. Poroshenko and his first government, composed largely of technocrats led by Prime Minister Arseniy Yatseniuk, implemented some impressive reforms in 2014 and 2015. The reforms included stabilizing government finances, consolidating the banking sector, enacting transparent procedures for government procurement, and raising energy tariffs to cover the cost of providing the energy. Such reforms helped Kyiv in 2015 to secure a program with the International Monetary Fund worth $17.5 billion in low interest credits over four years.

The pace of reform, however, slowed in 2016 and has not rebounded. As Ukraine has failed to deliver on measures such as land privatization and harmonization of gas prices, the IMF’s program has disbursed no money for 10 months. IMF officials now seem especially concerned about the need for more effective steps to combat corruption, which continues to plague many areas of Ukrainian life. They have focused in particular on establishing a special court to try corruption cases.

It is unclear when the IMF program will resume. The Ukrainian government was able to borrow on the Eurobond market last autumn, albeit at higher interest rates than from the IMF, so it may see less need for IMF funds—and thus less need to implement the reforms that it agreed to in its program. With presidential and parliamentary elections scheduled for 2019, many worry that Mr. Poroshenko will put off further reform steps.

That might not prove the smartest political course. Opinion polls reflect growing public dissatisfaction with the lack of action on corruption and failure to curb the political power of the oligarchs. A newly released survey regarding potential presidential candidates showed Mr. Poroshenko in second place, polling 9.4 percent—a dramatic decline from the 55 percent he won in 2014.

The slowed pace of reform has also caused frustration among Ukraine’s Western partners. They have begun voicing their concerns publicly. The European Union has followed the IMF and withheld assistance due to Kyiv’s failure to perform.

That is the challenge facing Mr. Poroshenko today. He has to continue to hold the line against Russian aggression while also delivering on further reforms. Of late, he has done more on the former than on the latter. He should not, however, use the conflict with Russia as an excuse. He needs to up his game on reform.

The West should strongly encourage that. Over the 26 years since the country regained independence, Ukrainian leaders have demonstrated the ability to muddle through—that is, to avoid disaster but not putting the country on a path to success. The people of Ukraine deserve more if they are to realize the potential of the Maidan. The West should want more as well: A successful Ukraine will contribute to a more stable Europe.